Implosive Consonant

Information about Implosive Consonant

Manners of articulation
Obstruent
Click
Stop
Ejective
Implosive
Affricate
Fricative
Sibilant
Sonorant
Nasal
Flaps/Tap
Trill
Approximant
Liquid
Vowel
Semivowel
Lateral
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Implosive consonants are stops (rarely affricates) with a glottalic ingressive airstream mechanism. That is, the airstream is controlled by moving the glottis downward, rather than by expelling air from the lungs as in normal pulmonic consonants. Contrastive implosives are found in approximately 10%-15% of the world's languages.

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, implosives are indicated by writing a stop consonant with a hook top.

During the occlusion of the stop, pulling the glottis downward rarefies the air in the vocal tract. The stop is then released. In languages where implosives are particularly salient, this may result in air rushing into the mouth, before flowing out again with the next vowel. (Thus the name "implosive".) However, in others there is no movement of air at all, contrasting with the burst of the pulmonary plosives. This is the case with many of the Kru languages, for example.

The vast majority of implosive consonants are voiced, meaning that the glottis is only partially closed. Because the airflow required for voicing reduces the vacuum being created in the mouth, implosives are easiest to make with a large oral cavity. Thus bilabial [ɓ] is the easiest implosive to pronounce, and also most common around the world. Velar [ɠ], on the other hand, is quite rare (and uvular [ʛ] even rarer). This is the opposite pattern to the ejective consonants, where it is the velar articulation that is most common, and the bilabial that is rare.

Fully voiced stops are often slightly implosive, although this is not always described explicitly, as there is no contrast with modal-voiced plosives in such languages. This is found around the world, from Maidu to Thai to many Bantu languages, including Swahili and Zulu.

Sindhi has an unusually large number of implosives, with [ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ]. Although Sindhi has a dental-retroflex distinction in its plosives, this is neutralized in the alveolar implosive. Indeed, retroflex implosives are exceedingly rare (one has been claimed for Ngad'a, spoken in Flores, Indonesia: Djawanai 1997).

Implosive affricates and fricatives are extremely unusual. Imploded affricates occur in Kung-Ekoka and Hendo (a Bantu language). Several Central Sudanic languages, such as Mangbetu, have implosive labiodental fricatives, which are "strongly imploded, the lower lip briefly pulled back into the mouth".

Voiceless implosives are found in languages as varied as the Owere dialect of Igbo in Nigeria, Krongo in Sudan, and some dialects of the Quiche language in Guatemala, but they are quite rare. The IPA has removed its earlier dedicated symbols for them, so now the bilabial voiceless implosive is transcribed as [ɓ̥].

(Owere Igbo has a seven-way contrast among bilabial stops: [p pʰ ɓ̥ b b̤ ɓ m].)

Implosives are commonplace among the Sub-Saharan African languages, are widespread in Southeast Asia, and are found in a few languages of the Amazon Basin. They are rare elsewhere, but do occur in scattered languages such as Maidu and the Mayan languages in North America, and Sindhi in the Indian subcontinent. They appear to be entirely absent from Europe and Australia, even from the exotic Damin, which uses every other possible airstream mechanism.

The attested implosive stops are:

Reported but not confirmed is:

voiced retroflex implosive

Bibliography

Demolin, Didier; Ngonga-Ke-Mbembe, Hubert; & Soquet, Alain. (2002). Phonetic characteristics of an unexploded palatal implosive in Hendo. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 32, 1-15.
Djawanai, Stephanus. (1977). A description of the basic phonology of Nga'da and the treatment of borrowings. NUSA linguistic studies in Indonesian and languages in Indonesia, 5, 10-18.
Maddieson, Ian. (1984). Patterns of sounds. Cambridge studies in speech science and communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

manner of articulation describes how the tongue, lips, and other speech organs are involved in making a sound make contact. Often the concept is only used for the production of consonants.
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obstruent is a consonant sound formed by obstructing outward airflow, causing increased air pressure in the vocal tract.

Obstruents are those articulations in which there is a total closure or a stricture causing friction, both groups being associated with a
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Clicks are stops articulated with two closures in the oral cavity. The pocket of air enclosed between these two closures is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue. (That is, they have a velaric/lingual ingressive airstream mechanism.
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stop, plosive, or occlusive is a consonant sound produced by stopping the airflow in the vocal tract. The terms plosive and stop are usually used interchangeably, but they are not perfect synonyms.
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“᾿” redirects here. For the similar character ᾿, see Spiritus lenis.

Manners of articulation
Obstruent
Click
Stop
Ejective
Implosive
Affricate
Fricative
Sibilant
Sonorant
Nasal
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Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as [t] or [d]) but release as a fricative (such as [s]
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Fricatives (or spirants) are consonants produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These are the lower lip against the upper teeth in the case of [f]
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sibilant is a type of fricative or affricate consonant, made by directing a jet of air through a narrow channel in the vocal tract towards the sharp edge of the teeth.

The term

The term sibilant is often taken to be synonymous with the term strident
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sonorant is a speech sound that is produced without turbulent airflow in the vocal tract. Essentially this means that a sound is sonorant if it can be produced continuously at the same pitch.
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nasal consonant is produced when the velum—that fleshy part of the palate near the back—is lowered, allowing air to escape freely through the nose. The oral cavity still acts as a resonance chamber for the sound, but the air does not escape through the mouth as it is
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flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator (such as the tongue) is thrown against another.
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trill is a consonantal sound produced by vibrations between the articulator and the place of articulation. Standard Spanish <rr> as in perro is an alveolar trill, while in Parisian French it is almost always uvular.

Trills are very different from flaps.
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Approximants are speech sounds that could be regarded as intermediate between vowels and typical consonants. In the articulation of approximants, articulatory organs produce a narrowing of the vocal tract, but leave enough space for air to flow without much audible turbulence.
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Liquid consonants, or liquids, are approximant consonants that are not classified as semivowels (glides) because they do not correspond phonetically to specific vowels (in the way that, for example, the initial [j]
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vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the
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Semivowels (also glides, more rarely: semiconsonants) are non-syllabic vowels that form diphthongs with syllabic vowels. They may be contrasted with approximants, which are similar to but closer than vowels or semivowels and behave as consonants.
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Laterals are "L"-like consonants pronounced with an occlusion made somewhere along the axis of the tongue, while air from the lungs escapes at one side or both sides of the tongue.
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Phonetics (from the Greek word φωνή, phone meaning 'sound, voice') is the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), and their production, audition and perception, while phonology, which
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International Phonetic Alphabet

Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

The International
Phonetic Alphabet
History
Nonstandard symbols
Extended IPA
Naming conventions
IPA for English The
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Affricate consonants begin as stops (most often an alveolar, such as [t] or [d]) but release as a fricative (such as [s]
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See also Glottalization

A glottalic consonant is a consonant produced with some important contribution (a movement, a closure) of the glottis (the opening that leads from the nose and mouth cavities into the larynx and the lungs).
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In phonetics, initiation is the action by which an air-flow is created through the vocal tract. Along with articulation, it is one of the two mandatory aspects of sound production: without initiation, there is no sound.
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The space between the vocal cords is called the glottis.

Function

As the vocal cords vibrate, the resulting vibration produces a "buzzing" quality to the speech, called voice or voicing.
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In human speech, pulmonic egressive sounds are those in which the air stream is created by the lungs (pulmonic) exhaling and pushing air out (egressive) through the mouth or nose. The majority of sounds in most languages are both pulmonic and egressive.
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Kru languages belong to the Niger-Congo language family and are spoken in the area ranging from the south-east of Liberia to the east of Côte d'Ivoire. The name Kru
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In phonetics, voice or voicing is one of the three major parameters used to describe a sound. It is usually treated as a binary parameter with sounds being described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced
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“᾿” redirects here. For the similar character ᾿, see Spiritus lenis.

Manners of articulation
Obstruent
Click
Stop
Ejective
Implosive
Affricate
Fricative
Sibilant
Sonorant
Nasal
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Maidu (also Northeastern Maidu, Mountain Maidu) is a severely endangered Maiduan language spoken by Maidu peoples traditionally in the mountains east and south of Lassen Peak in the American River and Feather River river drainages.
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